The Great King Read Online Free PDF

race of truth-telling heroes. But they are not Greeks, and when it came to war . . .
    We parted company off Illyria, and coasted the western Peloponnesus. But Poseidon was not yet done with me, and a mighty storm blew up off Africa and it fell on us, scattering our little squadron and sending my ship far, far to the south and west, and when the storm blew itself out, we were a dismasted hulk riding the rollers, and there was another damaged ship under our lee. We could see she was a Carthaginian. We fell on that ship and took it, although in a strange, three-sided fight – the rowers were rising against the deck crew of Persians.
    It was Artapharenes’ own ship, and he was travelling from Tyre to Carthage to arrange for Carthaginian ships to help the Great King to make war on Athens. And I rescued him – I thought him a corpse.
    So did his wife, my Briseis, who threw herself into my arms.
    Blood dripped from my sword, and I stood with Helen in my arms on a ship I’d just taken by force of arms, and I thought myself the king of the world.
    How the gods must have laughed.

Olympia – 484 BCE
    ‘Water is best, and gold, like a blazing fire in the night, stands out supreme of all lordly wealth. But if, my heart, you wish to sing of contests, look no further for any star warmer than the sun, shining by day through the lonely sky, and let us not proclaim any contest greater than Olympia.’
    Pindar. 476 BCE

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    Artapharenes stubbornly refused to die.
    After an hour, it was plain to any man who’d known as much strife as I that, despite the six deep sword-cuts in his side, he was not mortally wounded. He had a contusion on his head where a pike haft had laid open his scalp, and he’d been hacked at by desperate men, but he was merely unconscious.
    Don’t imagine I hovered at his side like Hermes attending on Zeus. Despite the sea fight, my ship still needed repair, and we were uncomfortably close to Africa – a strong north wind and we’d have been wrecked. And the coast of Africa was the coast of Libya – Carthage’s coast, and all hostile to me and mine. Megakles was between the steering oars. I had Sekla watch the coast – he knew Libya better than any man in my crew. Ka, my new African master bowman, had two men wounded, and he was doctoring them, and Leukas, my Alban oar-master, was with me in the water, patching the two man-lengths of riven wood where the storm had opened Lydia ’s seams along the starboard side.
    It was Brasidas – my former Spartan marine – who was left with the complex job of watching the vessel we’d taken. Complicated because, in truth, we hadn’t taken her – we’d rescued her. The presence of Briseis, the love of my life, made everything complicated. But the Persians aboard – my three friends, Darius, Cyrus and Arayanam, and Artapherenes himself – complicated things still more. We were not at war with Persia, that summer. And the Persians were clearly an embassy, and embassies were sacred to all the gods. I’m a pious man, even when I’m a fool – I could see the boughs of ivy and laurel in the bow, and I wasn’t going to betray my guest oaths and friendship oaths with these Persians, but I was hard put to decide just what to do with them. Or my love.
    Had Artapharenes just died . . .
    He wasn’t going to die. And that being plain, I dived into the cold seawater to help repair my ship and to clear my head, despite a wounded hand and the stares of Briseis’ women at my naked body, or perhaps because of them.
    Leukas, bless him, had no worries beyond the ship, and he went down under the hull and back up, again and again, shaking his head until, with ten men hauling the sodden remains of the other ship’s boat sail, we managed to get at our sprung timbers and bind the sail over it. It didn’t stop the leak, but it reduced it.
    We still had six oarsmen at the wooden pumps all day and all night.
    The Carthaginian ship we’d taken was in even worse shape. The mast had